


They Look at You Like They Don't Speak Your Language

by CaffeinaShips



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Dealers choice, M/M, Songfic, cannon major character death mentioned, dean and cas romance, demon dean mentioned, feeeeeelings, human cas, or dean and cas being emotional bros having feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-15
Updated: 2018-12-15
Packaged: 2019-09-18 15:42:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16997850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaffeinaShips/pseuds/CaffeinaShips
Summary: 4 times music moved Castiel.Four short vignettes involving songs spanning season 9-12The first is Season 9, human casThe second is the end of season 10, demon deanThe third is Season 11, during the hunt for AmaraThe fourth is directly after Season 12 episode 12 Stuck in the Middle (With You)





	They Look at You Like They Don't Speak Your Language

**Author's Note:**

> Oh man reader, I'm sorry. I was all set to write a silly crack fic. Had an idea and everything. And then I did this instead. To understand what's up here I'm going to tell you a long story about myself.
> 
> In 2006 when I was in grad school my mom was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer and I was living at home at the time, so I ended up driving her the 45 minutes to and from her appointments. My mom has been deaf in one ear my whole life and as a result has never cared much for music. For some reason I decided to use these drives to change her mind. Over the course of a few months I made probably a half dozen CDs all with random songs in an attempt to find one that would grab her. I would play one, say "How about that? No? Ok" and play the next one. I put some weird stuff on there. She never did change her mind about music.
> 
> Life goes on, she recovers, and we put it behind us.
> 
> Two weeks ago I was at my parents house and I picked up a blank CD to listen to on the way home. Two songs in and I remembered it was one of THOSE CDs. I tell you reader, scabs that I had mistaken for scars were just ripped right open, and feelings I hadn't had in a decade came right back to me. 
> 
> So here you go. Some heavy feelings to go with my heavy mood. The four songs I picked for these four stories are all off of that CD I made years ago to try (and fail) to get my mom to like music.

Music to an Angel is as logical and analytical as every part of humanity. Analysis of rhythm, patterns of sound, waves of sound, historical context, resonance of instruments, and so on. An Angel perceives the effects of sonic vibration on surrounding matter and believes they understand music more than a human ever could. Perhaps they do understand music more completely than people do.

Castiel had little time for music as an Angel, but somehow even less time as a human. Survival was difficult enough. So when he was moved by music for the first time, he was unprepared. 

The tasks of an angel are lofty and take a long view. They are spiritual missions of glorious purpose. Human tasks are trivial things. They start and end multiple times in the span of a day. At first Castiel found them irksome and tedious, but in just a couple of days at the Gas ‘n Sip, Cas learned to embrace and even appreciate human tasks.

There is so much satisfaction in setting out to make coffee to fill a carafe and then doing it. Cleaning a bathroom may be unsavory but it involved a known set of steps and has a beginning a middle and an end. It was simple for Castiel to allow himself to fall into completing one straightforward task after another. It was comforting. It gave him a purpose and a focus. It allowed him to feel accomplished multiple times a day. Sometimes multiple times an hour. It distracted him from feeling lonely or abandoned.

The Gas ‘n Sip has the bland soundtrack of a place trying to appeal equally to everyone by not really appealing to anyone. Mostly it’s made up of the sort of simplistic oldies rock that most humans grew accustomed to in their childhood. Humans of maybe 50 and younger all hear early rock as kids. They dance to The Lion Sleeps Tonight as toddlers and learn to count with Rock Around the Clock. They sing along to It’s My Party before they’ve even had their first crush. It forms a sort of inoculation and immunity against the emotional impact of those songs. In the case of most humans, most songs from their parents generation or earlier do little to move them emotionally. 

Two notable exceptions to this might be people who never moved beyond their parents music and people who never got the chance to develop the oldies callouses. 

Castiel (or Steve as he’s locally known) was having a slow day at work. Some might consider it boring, but he considered it a quiet time to complete several manageable sized tasks. Castiel gathered some paper towels and a spray bottle of cleaner to wipe the counter. He spritzed the counter next to the cash register, swiped with his paper towels once, then froze. He stood still and listened. 

"I'll bet she's out havin' a ball  
Not even thinkin' of me at all  
Stood up, brokenhearted again  
Well, I know just what I ought to do  
I ought to find me somebody new  
But baby I couldn't forget about you  
Stood up, brokenhearted again  
Why must I always be the one  
left behind never havin' any fun  
Stood up, brokenhearted again  
But I guess I'll go on bein' a fool…"

The easy lyrics and upbeat tempo were completely out of synch with the sudden utter loneliness pinning Castiel to the spot. He felt the music, really felt it, in the pain he’d been hiding and ignoring. Stood up. Abandoned. Tossed out. Left behind. 

The door jingled as a customer walked in and Cas snapped back to his world and started wiping the counter again. That night after closing the store and retreating to his sleeping bag in the back room, Castiel turned on the store music and cried. 

\----------------------

Through force of will Castiel was able to retain an appreciation of music after the return of his grace that he could not retain for food. Where he could not move beyond the feeling of each molecule pressing on his tongue, he could put aside the logic of sound waves and retain some of the human emotion of music. It was a little more work as an Angel than as a human, but he felt it was worth it. 

With Dean turned demon and gone, Sam often filled the bunker with music. There was an empty spot in the bunker and they both felt it. The silence where old Westerns should be, the hole in the kitchen where Dean stood to fry eggs. The bottles and burger wrappers missing from the trash. There were fewer dirty towels and fewer dirty socks. They were like pitfalls all over the bunker. Seemingly meaningless things that would trap you and force you to feel the terrible hollowness of Dean’s absence. Some were easy to avoid, like Dean’s bedroom. Some were harder to avoid, like a mannerism or figure of speech used without thinking. The emptiness was unbearable and would hit you so unexpectedly. So Sam kept the music playing so neither of them would have to feel the void. 

Castiel liked Sam’s music. Castiel liked Dean’s music too, but Dean’s music always came with a thick veneer of masculinity, toughness, or aggression. There is much love, gentleness, longing and pain behind the curtain of angry drums and shouting, but it took a little bit more work to get to it. Sam’s music was more genuine, more straightforward. It wore it’s complex human emotions on its sleeve. Sometimes it was sweet. Sometimes it was loving. Sometimes it hurt like hell. 

Castiel followed the sound of music and the smell of smoke to the kitchen where he found Sam standing over the sink watching a fully ablaze map burn away to nothing. Castiel stood beside him and together they watched until the last wisp of smoke drifted away. 

“I figured I’d give the old methods one last try.” 

Sam didn’t move or look at Castiel. Castiel didn’t mention this was at least the fourth map he’d smelled burning in the past week.

“There’s no harm in repeating an experiment”, Castiel assured him.

Sam shrugged it off and grabbed some paper towels and cleaning spray. Castiel watched as Sam meticulously wiped away every smudge and spot of ash in the sink and on the surrounding counters while the music played on in the background. When he was finished, he put the paper towels back in the cupboard.

“You hungry? I was thinking about a snack?”

Sam opened a drawer, pulled out a wide flat spatula, and stepped in front of the stove. They both felt the exact moment Sam stepped into the empty spot left by Dean. Sam froze staring at the spatula. After a heartbeat he set the spatula down gently and deliberately next to the stove, turned on his heels and walked out. The lyrics of his music wafting out of the room after him.

"Bad news comes, don't you worry even when it lands  
Good news will work its way to all them plans  
We both got fired on, exactly, the same day  
Well, we'll float on, good news is on the way  
And we'll all float on okay"

Castiel listened with his sensitive Angelic hearing to the sound of Sam’s retreating footsteps. He listened as Sam walked to his bedroom, sat on the edge of the bed and cried. 

\------------------------------------

They were in a coffee shop in a New England college town chasing something evil they hadn’t identified yet but had left missing people and sigils. The Winchesters were tired and wary, suspicious they were again facing a new trick of Amara’s, a new unknown evil. They were worn down by surprises and sincerely hoping for a witch or demon or something predictable. 

The coffee shop was open late into the night to accommodate midnight cramming students and it had wifi. From the moment they had walked in Sam had been at ease. His shoulders had relaxed, and he’d opened his laptop and made himself a little research nook in his corner of the table. He looked considerably cheered up. He was inconspicuous here because he looked completely at home. He dug into the research and got right to work.

Dean, by contrast, was irritable. He fidgeted and tapped his pencil. He was snappish and impatient. Castiel watched him from the counter while the barista made their order. Music played gently in the background as he ponderd Dean’s discomfort in these coffee shops. 

It’s the shame, Castiel realizes. The shame that Dean carries on himself always, like a beloved family heirloom. It is after all a gift from his family. Dean’s sense of being unworthy, Dean’s feelings of being a grunt unsuited for academic places, his feeling of responsibility for every mess the brothers are ever in. All gifts from his father that he holds onto dearly without any sense of how they weigh him down.

And of course the guilt is doubled by Sam’s ease. Sam looks like he belongs here because Sam does belong here. Sam is comfortable amongst the academic, the intellectually curious. He understands and enjoys collegiate culture. Dean will always believe that this comfort is something he selfishly stole from Sam because he didn’t want to hunt without family. Dean sees Sam’s ease and feels the guilt of having stolen a satisfying life away from Sam. 

What Dean fails to remember at these moments, Castiel thinks, is of the comfort and ease Sam displays on a hunt too. Sam looks just as much at home with a shovel in his hand digging a grave or with a shotgun in his hand taking on spirits. Sam is at home in both environments because Sam has allowed himself to make peace with both environments. Dean could be as comfortable reading student newspapers and drinking soy lattes if he could just let go of his perception of himself as an unsuited outsider. 

The lyrics of the music playing catches Castiel’s ear and he tunes into the sound of the music over the speakers and listens intently to those lyrics

"And they look at you like they don't speak your language  
And you're living at the bottom of a well  
And you've swallowed all the awful bloody secrets  
But you can't tell  
Oh, you know you ought to get yourself together  
But you cannot bear to walk outside your door  
No, you cannot bear to look into the mirror  
Anymore  
Oh, my crazy baby  
Try to hold on tight  
Oh, my crazy baby  
Don't put out the light  
The light, the light, the light  
And your hands are really shakin' somethin' awful  
As your worries climb around inside your clothes  
Oh, how long will you be sittin' in the darkness  
Heaven knows "

“Cass!”

The Barista calls Cas’s name and redirects his focus. He sees the slight moment of surprise and registers that the barista had been expecting a woman from the name. He gathers the three coffees and heads back to the table to help.

\-------------------------------------------------------

They are in Dean’s bedroom and Castiel feels frozen, helpless. It’s their first private moment since Castiel was stabbed with Michael’s Spear and nearly killed. Dean has just opened up to Castiel and expressed deep emotions. Dean had been faced with the fear of losing Castiel permanently and it had scared him. He’s not sure how many more of these close calls he can take. Dean’s taken some real hits. The loss of his Dad, the loss of Bobby, the loss of Charlie, but when he heard Castiel saying his final “I love you” Dean had felt like life was unlivable without Castiel in it. Dean needed Castiel to understand how deeply he needed him. How scared he was of losing him. He needed Cas to understand, and he needed him to take it seriously. 

Castiel believed that he knew every word in the English language. He believed he knew every definition of every word. But he was still terrible at connecting those words to emotional states. He wanted so desperately to reassure Dean, to comfort him. He wanted Dean to know that life wasn’t worth living without Dean in it. He wanted Dean to know that this was the fact that he took most seriously in the entire universe. He wanted to convey the depth and force of his feeling, but feeling words were so tricky and clumsy and difficult to apply.

Now Dean was facing him, his hands still trembled slightly from the impact of the strength of feeling and the work of expressing so much. He was emotionally exposed, and vulnerable. A position he loathed being in. A place that even now after all these years he was reluctant to allow Castiel to occupy. Castiel felt honored, and he felt the weight and importance of this moment. All he wanted to do was comfort and reassure Dean. Castiel abandoned his own words and reached for another language full of human emotion that he could understand. Music. He put his hands solemnly on Dean’s shoulders and recited lyrics. 

“I just wanna tell you how I'm feeling  
Gotta make you understand  
Never gonna give you up  
Never gonna let you down  
Never gonna run around and desert you  
Never gonna make you cry  
Never gonna say goodbye  
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you”

**Author's Note:**

> I swear to you, my story is 100% true, and that CD really does exist, and all 4 of these songs are on it. And several other bonkers songs. I wish I had the whole CD collection. There were some doozies on there. 
> 
> The first 3 songs are: Stood Up by Ricky Nelson, Float On by Modest Mouse, and Crazy Baby by Joan Osborne
> 
> If you find yourself promoting this work please try not to ruin the fun for the other unfortunate readers.
> 
> And now that we are well away from it I'm going to confess that this was for SPNColdest hits. If you aren't familiar with it check out the collection on AO3, or their tumblr @SPNColdesthits. They're on pillowfort somewhere too. The theme this month was songfic. The story is still true, but the rickroll was for coldesthits :)


End file.
